How to use freeze-dried fruit: yoghurt, porridge, baking

Five uses, and what each one does to the fruit

All five come down to one rule. Freeze-dried fruit is a dry, glassy sponge of the fruit’s own sugars, and those sugars are greedy for water.¹ Water turns the glass rubbery, and crisp becomes soft, then sticky.²

Dry, as it comes: add it last

As a snack, nothing needs doing. Freeze-drying concentrates the flavour, Penn State’s food preservation team says, and the fruit is good to eat as it is.⁶ Drink a glass of water with it, since it brings almost none of its own.⁶

On yoghurt, porridge or muesli, it goes on at the last moment, in the bowl, not the night before. Pour the milk first and the fruit second if you want the crunch. Our Porridge & Fruit breakfast goes the other way on purpose: the fruit is in with the oats, and the water brings it back.

As powder: colour and flavour without water

Powder is where it does what fresh fruit can’t. Ground fine, it goes into batters, doughs and icing without the water that fresh fruit or a purée would bring.³ Strawberries, raspberries and cherries give colour; mango and apple give flavour and very little colour.³

Step by step

1. Crush it in the closed bag

   Press the bag flat with a rolling pin, or use a spice grinder for a fine powder.

2. Sift out the seeds and lumps

   A fine sieve over a dry bowl. Strawberry seeds stay behind.

3. Use it straight away

   Powder has more surface than pieces and takes up moisture from the air fastest. Grind what you need, when you need it.

King Arthur, the American flour miller, works 2–3 tablespoons of powder into the dry ingredients of a chiffon cake, and notes that the cornstarch in icing sugar helps stop the powder clumping in icing.³

In chocolate, cakes and biscuits

Chocolate is more than a matter of taste here. A study of freeze-dried strawberries measured that a coating of milk or dark chocolate significantly cut how much moisture the fruit took up.⁴ Sosa, a Spanish maker of pastry ingredients, sells a cocoa-butter-coated version of its fruit for ice cream, drinks and filled chocolates, and labels the plain one for dry uses only.⁸⁹

So: pieces pressed into a bar of melted chocolate, or strawberries half-dipped, hold up. A ganache made with cream is a wet use, and the fruit in it will soften. Fruit with chocolate is a sweet, not a portion of fruit.¹⁰

For baking, put it in as powder, with the flour. Sosa lists its raspberry powder for bakery goods,⁵ and powder spreads the flavour without changing the water in the dough. Whole pieces in a wet batter take up its water and go soft; on top of a biscuit after baking, or pressed into icing, they stay crisp longer. Strawberry is the touchiest: of the foods compared in one study, it needed the least water to lose its glassy, crisp state.¹¹

When to add water, and when not

Freeze-dried fruit never needs water to be safe to eat; bacteria and moulds can’t grow in it while it’s dry.¹² Add water only if you want something closer to fresh fruit, for a fruit salad or a compote. A Polish study measured freeze-dried strawberries taking up water fast in the first minute, both at room temperature and near the boil; the room-temperature water kept the fruit’s shape, and the hot water loosened the flesh until the fruit lost its shape.⁷ Use water at room temperature, soak or spray, and stop when it looks right.

Once it’s wet, it’s fresh fruit again, as perishable as any other: eat it, or keep it in the fridge. At room temperature, prepared food has two hours at most.¹³

Keeping an open bag crisp

Four of our fruits: weight, price and how long they keep sealed

Pouch	Net weight	Price	Keeps for
Strawberries	40 g	€6.90€172.50/kg	at least 12 months
Cherimoya	40 g	€5.50€137.50/kg	at least 12 months
Mango	40 g	€5.50€137.50/kg	at least 12 months
Banana	40 g	€4.95€123.75/kg	at least 12 months

Four of our fruits: weight, price and how long they keep sealed

• Strawberries

  Net weight

  40 g

  Price

  €6.90€172.50/kg

  Keeps for

  at least 12 months

• Cherimoya

  Net weight

  40 g

  Price

  €5.50€137.50/kg

  Keeps for

  at least 12 months

• Mango

  Net weight

  40 g

  Price

  €5.50€137.50/kg

  Keeps for

  at least 12 months

• Banana

  Net weight

  40 g

  Price

  €4.95€123.75/kg

  Keeps for

  at least 12 months

Sealed, the strawberries keep at least 12 months, counted from the day the bag is closed, as how long freeze-dried food keeps explains. Opened, it’s the air you’re fighting. Freeze-dried strawberry powder stays dry and free-flowing only while the air around it is drier than about 9% relative humidity, a figure researchers in Valencia measured,² and ordinary air is far damper than that.

On the trail a bag weighs next to nothing and gives you something sweet that isn’t chocolate, which is why it’s on the list in food for a multi-day hike. How it differs from the chewy dried fruit on the next shelf is in freeze-dried fruit, and the fresh fruit behind our cherimoya bag in cherimoya season and how to eat it.

From our range

Strawberries

Strawberries and nothing else: the one for powder, colour and chocolate.

€6.90€172.50/kgHear from us before the shop opensSee the strawberries